MS Golwalkar, BJP’s guruji, wasn’t closeted about his admiration for Hitler. His ideas of Hindutva and Hitler’s ethnic cleansing had much in common. Both believed in the creation of modern nation states with only pure races—one by expelling Jews, the other by desiring a similar fate for Muslims. Their vision had no place for multiculturalism, and progress, in their view, required absolute homogenization.
This isn’t as contradictory to Modi’s Israel romance as it may seem. Golwalkar did not have a soft corner for Christians over Jews, but for majoritarianism on cultural grounds. The theory, in fact, fits perfectly in present-day Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Muslims. It is no surprise that India’s right-wing has the highest respect for not just Israeli technological advancements but also for the nature of Israel’s society. Hindutva’s father of the nation, Veer Savarkar, wrote rather flatteringly: ‘the Jews are brave and intelligent people… although their State looks like a child before our great state of Bharat, we must emulate its example.’
One disturbing historical fact, which many intellectuals have highlighted, is that in the most developed (Western) societies, minorities always had to pay a painful price. Europe did it with the Jews, North America with the natives and Israel with Muslims. Fast economic growth and the understanding of what development is, has required either a destruction of diversity or dictatorship.
India is beginning to experience a similar phase. The development of Gujarat, in terms of 24×7 electricity, more investment, wider roads, concrete megastructures, was paid for by the blood of Muslims. Netanyahu has the blood of another G, Gaza, on his hands. In him, Modi sees a successful statesman who has efficiently managed to tackle security challenges they both see in Muslim citizens and neighbours.
Both Hindutva and Israeli Zionism forces believe that minorities cannot and must not be assigned full citizenship rights and that true democracy is majoritarianism, where even when minorities are not persecuted (not out of humanitarianism but for economics), they must be contained. There’s nothing more appealing to Hindutva forces than India officially becoming a Hindu country— what Israel already is, a Jewish state.
The other psychological link between the two is their vision of a militarised society. Israel’s conscription policy (not for Arab Muslims, who cannot be trusted), its second-highest military budget as a percentage of GDP, its occupation of areas designated for a different nation are all great examples for Akhand Bharat visionaries. The BJP has already made desperate attempts to paint security-related items as an integral part of the Indian social fabric.
Nehru’s neutrality has been ditched for the needs of an aspirational superpower. Even the prudence of safeguarding our strategic interests, while standing up for justice, has been abandoned for sweet surveillance-drone deals.
Both Netanyahu and Modi bond on a consciousness of patriarchal domination over their marginalised people. They intelligently ride on glorious civilisational legitimacy to assert their supremacy. For a disputed Jerusalem, the BJP and the RSS have an Ayodhya to exploit. In Modi’s India, Palestinians have the solidarity of only Dalits and Muslims—those oppressed like themselves. The message is clear, the weak must vacate their bastis, jungles and villages to make way for modernity, or they will be crushed and bombed to death.
Perhaps what Gandhi wrote for Hitler and his politics carries a lesson for both Modi and Netanyahu, “The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have gone…For, he is propounding a new religion of exclusive and militant nationalism in the name of which any inhumanity becomes an act of humanity to be rewarded here and hereafter.” We are slowly unbecoming who we were. Our diversity has suddenly become a problem and acceptance (or tolerance) an invitation to exploitation. Our democracy has become a bargaining customer, our truths commercial. Justice is selective outrage and consent another commodity.
The first Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Israel is the undressing of new India. Modi has resolved India’s age-old dilemma between just and lust.
The author can be contacted on Twitter @AshAkshat.
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